


To Boldy Go With the Ghosts that Hide in the Night

by Gadhar



Category: The Expendables (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe- Star Trek, CMO!Lee, Captain!Barney, Explicit Language, Gore, M/M, Nurse!Doc
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-03-23
Updated: 2015-08-22
Packaged: 2018-03-19 07:52:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 3,934
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3602181
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gadhar/pseuds/Gadhar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Expendables in space aboard some federation issued starship because apparently they couldn't get into enough trouble on earth.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Let Me Hear You

**Author's Note:**

> I neither own Expendables or Star Trek.
> 
> Not in any order whatsoever. Just posting some of what I wrote. Will add more later. And then some more when I write more.

Lee’s arms stretched over the ensign’s body as the whole ship jolted to the side again. He had his fingers clenched tight around the biobed, trying to keep himself upright and the ensign as stable as possible. Doc was doing his own job as a stabilizer, trying to keep the tray of surgical tools upright even with his hands slippery with blood. 

There had been an explosion in engineering earlier, one of Caesar’s little ensigns getting caught in the blast. If it wasn’t the burns draining the kid’s life signs, it was the puncture wound from where part of the bulkhead had pierced his side.

The ship righted itself and Doc immediately handed over more bandages, the bleeding wouldn’t stop and the auto sutures had already proven useless with the walls of the wound being too weak to hold them. If he could just get the bleeding to stop then he could see inside and figure out what to _do._

The ship jerked to the side again, everything shaking, and Lee cringed at the sounds of equipment hitting the floor. At this rate sickbay would be full with broken bones and bruises from the crew crashing into the wall. 

“Doc! Call the Captain,” Lee barked as he reached over and grabbed another set of bandages. He didn’t miss Doc’s suspicious look but Lee couldn’t give two shits. Doc had had problems with the way Lee ran sickbay from day one, probably wasn’t going to change either way. 

“Captain here,” Came the Captain’s voice from the panel on the desk. It was a strained greeting, but he didn’t sound hurt so Lee had no problem launching right in. 

“What the _fuck_ are you doing up there, Barney? This is a damned starship not some old bumper car. How am I supposed to do my job when you can’t do yours. I’m a doctor, not a pilot get your shit together I can’t do your job too!”

There was a brief silence, one where Lee could hear the garbled commands directed at the bridge personnel though none were loud enough to catch. Then Barney’s voice came back on, calm and unfrazzled like usual. “I apologize Doctor, if _you_ want to come up here and play chicken with some Klingon missiles, feel free. I’ve even kept the seat warm for you.”

Lee snorted and cursed, the bleeding was slowing but the ensign’s life signs were still dropping. “If playing chicken is all you're doing then you need to rethink that if you intend to have your crew whole and standing. If you keep sending them flying into walls I won’t be able to treat them as fast as they come in.”

“You have a _staff_ for that, Dr. Christmas.”

“I’m not going to have that if you don’t stop piloting like an idiot. You should see the state of my sickbay! Hypos everywhere, Doc was already sprawled on the floor three times and it’s really hard to suture a damn burn victim when I have to spend most of my time keeping him on the bed!”

“Your advice will be taken under advisement Dr. Christmas and how is our ensign doing, by the way?”

“Thorn will live, if you’d control your goddamn ship. Do not make me tell Caesar his little prodigy died on the table because of some damn turbulence!”

Barney’s voice started up again, but cut off in an electrical sizzle as the ship rocked again. _They must be getting through the shields,_ Lee thought even as he let loose a sound of triumph. The sutures were holding, now they could focus on the skin. “Doc get me the dermal regenerator.”

“You there, Christmas?” The Captain’s voice came over again and now Lee could hear it, just the layer of panic, all edged in desperate determination. Part of him wanted to make a run for the bridge, switch over to the duties and mindset of being first officer, but no, he couldn’t, not with Ensign Thorn’s skin sticking to his damn biobed. 

“I’m here.”

“I’m working on it, okay? Keep Thorn alive, I got the rest, Lee.”

Lee snorted, Barney didn’t need to tell him that, he already knew.


	2. Let Me Go

_Shit, shit, shit. This wasn’t supposed to happen. This was never supposed to happen!_

Barney’s eyes burned, burned with dust and grit and unshed tears and everything felt heavy with the weight of death. All the bodies around him smelled of nothing but more death and even as the body underneath his hands shuddered with the very breaths of a fleeting life—but there was still a chance. There was still a goddamn _chance!_ —the throes of death was so cloyingly thick in the air. On his skin and that of his friend’s. Death was in the very air they breathed.

“Lee! You hold on, you hear me? You fucking HOLD. ON.” Barney pressed down harder on his hands, on the wound in Lee’s chest that had the ground stained with blood. There was a hiss of air, nothing anywhere near what Lee’s voice was supposed to sound like, and Barney looked at the bloodstained teeth glistening in the light of Noomar’s three suns; Lee’s broken and twisted smile. 

“Tell Doc...tel...”

“Don’t talk! Just hold on, please–god– _fuck!”_ Blood spurted up from an artery, a warm flood rushing through the cracks of Barney’s fingers as Lee’s body spazzed and jerked before settling again. “You’re okay, you’re okay, I’ve got this, I’ve got this, I’ve got–” Barney cut off at feel of Lee’s hand around his wrist, tight and binding, a near inhuman strength, one he shouldn’t possess with the way his body was shutting down. He felt so much in that touch. But more than anything else was the feel of Lee’s will, one to go with the gritted bloodied teeth and the knife-sharp glare he had focused on Barney.

“You tell D-doc, not to fu-fuck up...my...my sickbay!” His hand twisted around Barney’s wrist with that last word, sliding easily in the blood. And in Lee’s eyes Barney saw it—saw the resignation, the _I’m finished,_ the _let me die,_ the _there’s nothing you can do_ —and Barney cried out against it because fuck if he was going to let it end here. Fuck it all if he was going to lose Lee because the idiot sacrificed himself. Fuck it all if he was about to lose the only thing he had in this world. The only thing that kept him sane even when piloting his beloved starship. He was a fucking captain not a doctor but he was not going to lose Lee!

Barney heard the running steps of his crewmates, saw them skidding into the dirt around him, medical scanners and bandages appearing from nowhere. He could feel someone pulling at him, taking over where his hands had been, pressing down on Lee chest. 

And in a moment, with nothing in between, he was at the edge of the circle, watching as Doc and the others scrambled around Lee’s body, yelling and shouting and cursing. 

Barney felt cold. Alone. Lost, even. And the more he watched, the more the grief and fury hardened in his gut. 

Lee’s hand had already released his wrist. 

Lee had already let him go.


	3. Be With Me

“So whatcha doing?”

“Synthesizing a new drug.”

“What kind of drug?”

Lee looks up from the microscope, giving him the flat irritated look he usually does when Barney makes any attempt to understand science and medicine and anything that’s, as Lee said, _meant to actually save your life. We both know you’re better at doing stupid shit to kill yourself._ Barney would like to think he’s getting better at that. And at understanding the medicine/science stuff. Of course, Lee thinks it’s all a futile attempt. “Another form of sedative.”

Barney knows his eyebrows are climbing up and both he and Lee know why they’re doing so as well. “I’m not _that_ bad.”

“The hell you’re not!” Lee snaps and his body twists so that he can face Barney, eyes narrowing as he slams his fist down and starts snarling like he usually does. “I damn well can’t even keep you here when you’re strapped _down._ You’re always convincing someone to let you go and I don’t know why they listen to you more than me and–”

“Because I’m the _captain._ ”

“Not in here you aren’t! You’re _my_ patient. And if I have to synthesize _twenty thousand_ new sedatives until I find the perfect one that will put your ass down and keep you that way, then I will. You’re more likely to kill yourself tripping over the damn biobed covers after losing half your blood, than you are from any actual _injury._ ”

Barney holds his hands up, whistling as he leans back on the desk a little. “Okay, okay.”

“No it’s not okay! Because of you, half the ship thinks they can pull the same shit. And I’ll tell you right now– I fix them real quick! But that does not mean it’s not a useless waste of my time that could be prevented if you would just act like the responsible captain and role model _you’re supposed to be._ I swear to the high heavens that if you keep going on like that, Galgo will copy you like a goddamn kid and I can tell you I have no problems shooting _him!_ I mean christ Barney do you even–”

Lee’s voice cuts off with a yelp as Barney jerks the chair over, catching Lee’s face in his hands and kissing his rant dead right there with a few gentle but earnest pushes and then he’s tasting Lee’s mouth and he knows—a deep stirring in his gut—that for as light-headed as he feels, Lee’s mind is practically swimming in blank whiteness. It’s in the way his eyes widen and light before closing and he’s stretching up into Barney, hands climbing up Barney’s neck and pulling him down. 

“Christmas, I just scanned–Christ! Seriously? I mean goddamn, close the fucking door! That’s the whole point of having an office!”

Barney slides his hands over Lee’s and pulls away to the sound of the door sliding shut, the locks hissing. Lee’s looking at the door, expression battling between bliss and annoyance. Barney gives Lee’s hands a squeeze, kicking his foot out to bump Lee’s chair and get his attention. “Let it go, yeah? He’s probably scarred for life. Fair trade, I think.”

Lee’s head dips a little and then he turns back towards Barney, face neutral though his eyes are saying something more. “He still won’t call me ‘doctor’.”

And there’s a flash of irritation in the words, irritation that Barney thinks—knows—is directed at him. Or at least, things that happened because of him. “It bother you?”

“What? Having someone work under me who not only has an issue with everything I do, including _how_ I do my job, but also doesn’t even think I’m _capable_ of doing it? No. Not at all. I mean, that’s why I’m CMO, yeah?”

Meaning, _yes._

Barney slides off the desk, dropping Lee’s hand in favor of smoothing a hand along Lee’s shoulder and drawing him up. He can’t really do anything about Doc, the guy’s just touchy and sore about the past. And Barney knows that it’s actually having someone he can’t really trust be his second in charge that’s bothering Lee rather than the other stuff. But then, again, he can’t really do much about that either.

“Come on, I have the strong desire to fuck a certain CMO until he screams and I would much rather hear the echoes from the walls of my quarters than over the incessant beeping of medical machines.”


	4. Don't Leave Me

Barney closes his eyes, forehead resting on the side of the biobed. There’s the slow whir and hum of the life signs monitor but otherwise, it’s quiet, silent, _still._

Lee’s body fills with air and deflates, the machine breathing for him, and Barney finds himself having to remember to breathe, hands rolled into fists on his lap. There’s another breath, the most minute shifts in the biobed as blood is forcefully pumped, as air is forcefully pumped, as some crude imitation of _life_ is _forced_ through Lee’s body. Pale and sick, nowhere near alive. 

_This is wrong._

_He’s dead._

_Let him go._

Tool was right. Barney knows he just can’t—can’t make himself _do_ anything about it. 

It’s one thing, to yell and shout, to claw through Tool’s reason with pure fiery grief and lost love but here, alone, in the dark, so close to the shell of Lee—of what’s left of Lee, nowhere near enough to even really _be_ Lee anymore—it’s too hard to summon up any of those feelings. None of that anger or grief is present, none of that love. He is too numb for any of it. Too cold. 

All that’s left is Tool telling him what’s right—what Barney knows is right—and he can’t find any reasons not to. Not anything past such a vague thing it’s not even hope anymore and his own selfish needs. 

Lee has forms filled out. Barney knows what the bastard wants. To be dead. No extraordinary measures. And here Barney is denying that last wish as much as he fucking can. 

_In the morning._ That’s what he thinks. That’s when he’ll turn the machines off. When he’ll put Lee’s body in stasis until he can do whatever sort of burial procedures his CMO wants. 

Former CMO. Wanted. 

––––––

And in the morning, when he shrugs off Tool’s hand and goes back to the bridge, ready for another day of commanding and pretending nothing’s wrong...

Well, no one knows about that promise in the dark. And he’ll go back and spend his nights the same way again. Probably until Tool has him declared unfit and makes the moves to go right around him. Ending it the way Lee wanted.


	5. Chapter 5

He's standing there, in cadet red that matches the blazing in his eyes and Barney doesn't have to even look to know— _he wants that one._

'Youngest and brightest mind.'

'Too young.'

'Brash and stupid. Kid's crazy.'

There's usually a string of recommendations for posts that you have to go through. Starfleet assigning people wherever they think but sometimes Captains can choose and Barney supposes they think he's earned enough right that he can choose the replacement for a post that's been vacated three times under his command. 

So they've lined up the available doctors and when he walks in the room it's all nervous energy and the kind of tension that makes him grit his teeth in disgust. And as he walks the line he starts to feel it, this slice of calm, a knife through the tension and it's too early to tell if the kid's cocky or delusional or confident or what but all the entitlement that the rank of Captain supposedly gets him that he's never utilized is screaming at him right now and he just _knows._ In some strange primal way and if he thinks hard about it, this is sort of the same way he chose his friends, but on a less intense level.

_That one._

_I want that one._

_Mine._

And he hardly glances at the kid, just glimpses long enough to see a strong jaw and eyes that have an age to them, like old forged steel, before he's walking out the other door, leaving in his wake the rest of the doctors they lined up.

\-----

Barney looks at him now, the blue of his uniform matching the calm of his eyes and Barney can't really remember how it happened. How, 'you, on my ship, now' became 'you wanna be bartender/psychiatrist or is it my turn?'. How they somehow managed to form this timeless friendship that he hasn't heard of outside of tales of Vulcan-Human relation legends. The kind of friendship that's as deep as brotherhood. 

It's been only a few months, and somehow, somehow his cadet turned CMO already has the respect of the crew and more importantly Barney's- but then, he wouldn't have picked the kid in the first place if he coudn't do that much. 

But he's already well solidified in the structure of the ship, as integral as a warp engine. 

And when the war on Lexus XII happens and Tool disappears under the burden of betrayal and loss and pain and he leaves Barney's side as first officer there is no other choice. 

It feels right, but then, it's wrong as well. Two posts in one. Far too much for one man to handle. But Barney makes the move anyway, sends a transmission along to Starfleet and knows that it'll take weeks to be received and by then there's nothing they can do to stop what he's about to do. 

And when he asks, Christmas is already in the height of a rant—silver-tongued and sharp, the barest flush flaming his neck—and he doesn't even break stride to answer. He goes on and on and says 'sure' almost as though he doesn't even hear the question, going right on about how Gunner screwing around in engineering is messing with system wide operations and more importantly _my ability to treat patients, if you're gonna have me use this bloody technology than I should be able to use it without worrying about a fellow officer screwing them up!_

____

All he remembers is the red. The red of blood so soon replaced by the red of a uniform as Lee had dug it out— _I bet you all the credits Samson owes me for saving his life it still fits_ —and then the red of the medals and pins as they donned their dress uniforms for the formal ball all in the name of diplomacy. 

And then there was the red of the Saurian brandy, vibrant and burning- blazing its way down his throat- blazing its way down Lee's and then there was the red of the Damaskian sunset, the red of Lee's flush, the red of his lips, of his skin.

All Barney remembers seeing is red. 

The red walls of some random room as he stared over Lee's shoulder, hands at his pants and lips at his neck. 

The red of borrowed blankets— _god he hopes the habitant of this room doesn't come home any time soon_ —as he pushes Lee down, bares down on him and feels the flush of their skin pressed together. 

The red of the shadow cast on Lee's face as Barney fucked into him, further into the mattress, further from the red light streaming into the windows. 

And then he remembers the darkness, warm and smooth—inviting—as he slipped into sleep, wrapped around Lee.   
\----  
They went on as if nothing happened and Barney supposes it was to be expected. 

They both had been a little buzzed and a lot out of their minds. And if Lee wishes to blame it on rich food and even richer brandy than Barney sees no reason to argue. They don't need the scandal. 

They're already known as the flying loony bin. The crazy ones. It wouldn't help if the two most prominent names on Starfleet's shitlist came up in the rumor mill in the same sentence as fucking and sex and _relationship._

That's all it was though, in all honesty. Just sex. Just fucking. No relationship. 

And Barney can content himself with his hand and the memories drenched in red because it's a helluva lot more than he had before. 

So when they go on, as before, with a sparring match here and a chess match there and another bartender/psychiatrist session in Barney's quarters right now, Barney expects the same. He expects the burn of alcohol, the joy of company, and the pleasurable silence of not being alone with his own thoughts.   
He does not expect the kiss goodnight on Lee's way out. Lips and all.

Nor does he expect the damn possessive growl in his throat three nights later with Lee on top of him on the couch and all they're doing is kissing and groping and moaning for all their worth and it's like that first night but better, longer. But it ends with an emergency in sickbay and an engineering accident turned epidemic and they both end up dragging themselves away and to their respective stations to handle the fallout.  
\----  
And it's three months before anything else happens. So long that Barney convinces himself there never was anything between them, it was just an extended one night stand and he's simultaneously grateful and disappointed—fucking heartbroken—even though two of those months had Lee called away on Starfleet business that Barney wasn't included in.  
But then they get the call, one to beam aboard, and he sees Lee in the transporter room and he's...different. 

It's the only word Barney can think of, though it seems to not even describe anything because for all he knows about Lee, for all he _feels_ that something is—off, different, wrong?—he can't pinpoint it. 

He greets Barney as normal, turns down his offer of a drink in favor of heading back to his quarters— _'closest thing I got to home, yeah. I miss it'_ — to sleep.  
And that's that. Barney goes back to the bridge to resume command and he leaves it at that. 

So when it's late into the ship's approximation of night and he's been asleep for maybe 30 minutes and someone's trying to get in, Barney lets them in if only to curse them out.   
But then it's Lee and he looks like shit and Barney finds himself full of a red-eyed sobbing CMO who smells of vomit and alcohol and he hates the way seeing Lee like that twists him up inside. 

It means he's attached but for all that Barney doesn't regret it but he doesn't know what's wrong or what to do and he spends the rest of the night trying to keep Lee from puking on himself. 

__

It's only in the early hours of the morning, after Lee's been asleep long enough that Barney feels comfortable enough to leave him alone and pull some strings to figure out just what happened on Lee's special Starfleet business.

The images and files of a brutal genocide is almost enough to make him want to cry himself, it is enough to make him sick and he doesn't even know how Lee's even alive and sane sleeping in his bed after seeing all that up close and personal. 

\------

When he tries to talk to Lee about it in the morning— _afternoon, night, next morning, he doesn't know, he's already let Caesar take the conn_ —he somehow ends up with Lee on his knees in the bathroom sucking Barney off with a desperate determination that leaves Barney stinging with a heavy guilt that he even let it happen. 

And it goes on like that for awhile. Because while they do eventually go back to regular duties, Lee still comes to his quarters at night to crawl into his bed to sleep. And every time Barney opens his mouth to ask— _because he's got to talk about it. He needs to know if Lee's okay_ —Lee kisses it shut and the attempt at talking becomes fucking and as guilty as Barney feels, as much as he beats himself up for it, he's just selfish enough to let it happen.   
All so he can hold on to something he doesn't really have to begin with.


End file.
